Malaysia Mircosite

Client: University of Reading

Project duration: 2015

Project skills: responsive design, front end development

Lift has worked with the University of Reading on a range of projects for a number of years. Just before for the opening of a new multi-million pound campus in Malaysia, we were approached with the task of creating a microsite to promote a courses based in this state-of-the-art new campus.

Project requirements

The task was to create a stand alone microsite that would serve to provide insight into the benefits for potential students based in Malaysia applying for Reading. The microsite needed be adaptable for the different waypoints of the student recruitment cycle. For example, in the lead up to an Open Day, the content and cta’s needed to be easily adapted to focus on this key event.

The audience was very wide and so was split into two groups.

Primary audiences:

Malaysian Malay prospects and parents

Indian Malaysian prospects and parents

Chinese Malaysian students and parents

Secondary audiences:

Private international school prospects

Other HE institutions (both in the UK and Malaysia)

The microsite also had to tie in with various printed material that formed a recruitment campaign currently running in Malaysia and one of the first digital outputs making use of a new Malaysia focused sub-brand.

Objectives

Support the current recruitment target for students in the 15/16 academic year

Drive quality applications from high-performing students from within the domestic market (Peninsular and East Malaysia)

Process

Wireframing

With these considerations in mind, we were able to focus on creating a structured wireframe around a core narrative that encourages users to the primary call to action at the end. A mobile first approach was taken to help set a clear hierarchy and rationalise the different content types.

Design

Design focused around use of large imagery and display level typography to draw the audience in while still providing enough information to help the user make an informed decision. Once again approaching from a mobile first perspective to create clear sections where to help the user easily navigate content and maintain a sense of positioning within the site. This then could be scaled up to for different screen sizes to respond to the right user experience. Along with the imagery, iconography was used to help highlight the unique selling points and provide insight at a glance as to the nature of the content.

Development

The microsite was built from the ground up using jade and scss. Developing the site ourselves allowed for a seamless transition from the design phase as the approach to the build was being considered in advance. It was important to keep the code as clean and sustainable as possible for any future implementations that need to be made.